LASG: Pupil Population, Food Price Hike Delay Execution of School Feeding Programme

The Lagos State Government at the weekend disclosed that huge population of pupils in public schools and hike in prices of food items, among other rationales, delayed the execution of the National Home-grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP) in the state.

Specifically, the state government claimed that the population of pupils in 1,010 primary schools across all local government areas alone “is about the number of students in five or six states put together.” The Deputy Governor of the state, Dr. Oluranti Adebule, explained the delay at an annual ministerial news conference she addressed at the state secretariat, Alausa on Friday to mark the third anniversary of Governor Akinwunmi Ambode.

Among others, Adebule addressed the news conference alongside the Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Mr. Kehinde Bamigbetan; Special Adviser on Education, Mr. Obafela Bank-Olemoh and Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Education, Mrs. Elizabeth Adekanye.

Statistics from the Lagos Bureau of Statistics showed that there “are currently 1,010 primary schools with a population of 497,318 pupils; 670 junior and senior secondary schools with a population of 564,758 students and 5 technical and vocational schools across the state.”

Across the federation, the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo had claimed that 24 states had already started executing the school feeding programme with 8,260,984 pupils being fed daily in 45,394 public primary schools The states already implementing the feeding programme comprise Anambra, Enugu, Oyo, Osun, Ogun, Ebonyi, Zamfara, Delta, Abia, Benue, Plateau, Bauchi, Taraba, Kaduna, Akwa-Ibom, Cross River, Imo, Jigawa, Niger, Kano, Katsina, Gombe, Ondo and Borno.